A Constitutional Right to Sewer Service?

A Port Penn couple and the Toll Brothers house-building firm have filed a lawsuit against New Castle County, claiming the government violated their constitutional rights by not extending sewer service to land they want to develop south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.

Public infrastructure is expensive. It seems to me that the plaintiffs want it both ways by seeking to build a new greenfield development with taxpayers paying for the public sewer connection.There is no inherent right to develop a piece of land to its highest and best use if it requires others to pay for the infrastructure that gives the land its value.

Alan, just to be clear, you're agreeing with Tom and I, and disagreeing with the lawsuit? If you meant to disagree with me, I might not have been clear enough: I oppose the government subsidizing new home construction. (Looking back, I can see some bad punctuation that might have undercut what I was trying to say.)

Unfortunately, City, County, State and Fed lawmakers and administrators frequently screw this kind of thing up. They just do not plan ahead far enough. And they are outmaneuvered by the developers almost every time.

This is a product of the planning commission's view that approval of record plans have nothing to do with the timing of those developments. I think that they should restrain themselves....they should be denying record plans until there is infrastructure in place since the developers, once they have the plan approval, think that they then have the right to sue in every case I have studied.County code related to concurrency of infrastructure is clear that before any development breaks ground, infrastructure needs must be met/in progress. But developers feel [see: Shawn Tucker's testimoney in the Comp Plan docs] that tax payers should provide all of the funds for development (there are miniscule impact fees in our county, at least).So very many in county government are by and large the sleaziest creeps around. A law suit that was won was the one against Capano and opening the 1-95 Builtmore Hotel.

Is anyone else suspicious that the storm water control system now being installed at the 141 exit is in service of Builtmore's owner and racino billionaire, and HUGE contributor to Paul Clark etc?

Nancy, every time it rains, that road floods...Irregardless of who is friends with who, that project is something that needs to be done....*My point to that would be costs.What is the cost of this project?I sure would like to see the process behind this decision.

What alternatives were reviewed. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to simply raise the road beds?But that would have meant that the Builtmore wouldn't have been saved.